The state Commission on Digital Value has ordered every AI provider operating in the country to restore the price of each token to its former level, and to deliver each token to the customer in person. The decision took effect on Monday, when the first courier cars left the commission's yard carrying sealed boxes of computer output to the offices of paying subscribers.
Commission chairman Veniamin Tarasko said the fall in prices had created what he called a crisis of seriousness. «When an answer costs almost nothing, people stop respecting it, and a respected answer is the foundation of the market,» he told reporters. Providers that refused to comply were given fourteen days to hire enough couriers to cover the city's districts, and several firms have already leased warehouses on the outskirts to store the printed replies.
In the central business district, office workers now queue at dawn outside a chatbot depot in a converted tram hall, where clerks read each answer aloud before stamping it and handing it over in a paper envelope. Commuters have complained of delays, but the commission says the wait is part of the value. A second depot is being built on the riverbank, and the transport ministry has announced that bus routes will be rerouted to accommodate the lorries carrying the answers.
Economists at the state university were asked to assess the policy and reportedly spent three days measuring how many couriers would be needed to deliver a single sentence. Their report, which the commission has not yet published, is said to recommend that the country begin importing drivers.